Where is Heaven?

Soon after I was converted, an infidel asked me one day why I look up when I prayed. He said that heaven was no more above us than below us; that heaven was everywhere. Well, I was greatly bewildered, and the next time I prayed, it seemed almost as if I was praying into the air. Since then I have become better acquainted with the Bible, and I have come to see that heaven is above us; that it is upward, and not downward. The Spirit of God is everywhere, but God is in heaven, and heaven is above our heads. It does not matter what part of the globe we may stand upon, heaven is above us.

In the seventeenth chapter of Genesis it says that God went up from Abraham; and in the third chapter of John, that the Son of Man came down from heaven. So, also, in the first chapter of Acts we find that Christ went up into heaven (not down) and a cloud received him out of sight. Thus we see heaven is up.

The very arrangement of the firmament about the earth declares the seat of God’s glory to be above us. Job says: “Let not God regard it from above” (Job 3:4). Again, in Deuteronomy, we find, “Who shall go up for us to heaven?” (30:12). Thus, all through Scripture we find that we are given the location of heaven as upward and beyond the firmament. This firmament, with its many bright worlds scattered through, is so vast that heaven must be an extensive realm. Yet this need not surprise us. It is not for shortsighted man to inquire why God made heaven so extensive that its lights along the way can be seen from any part or side of this little world.

Dwight L. Moody, Heaven (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1995).